


Trust Fall

by Alley_Skywalker



Category: Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 18:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21041009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/pseuds/Alley_Skywalker
Summary: “Darling, look at me.” He is cupping her face and while he’s not forcing her to look up, Sonya feels compelled to do so anyway. His eyes are bright and full of tenderness and she feels something in the bottom of her stomach seize up painfully at that look. She’s still not used to this. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”





	Trust Fall

“Look at me.”

Her hands are trembling as she reaches up to curl her fingers around his wrists. 

“Darling, look at me.” He is cupping her face and while he’s not forcing her to look up, Sonya feels compelled to do so anyway. His eyes are bright and full of tenderness and she feels something in the bottom of her stomach seize up painfully at that look. She’s still not used to this. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”

She’s still not used to him. 

She nods, numbly. His skin under her fingers is warm and rough. She can feel the strength in his hands even with the softest of touches. She can imagine those hands wrapping around her throat and squeezing the air out of her… 

She feels guilty for the thought. Dolokhov – Fedya: she should get used to thinking of him by his first name – has never hurt her. He has never even threatened to hurt her or intimidated her in any way. But he frightens her with his intensity sometimes, the way he looks at her, the way he apparently feels about her. 

Nikolai’s love had never burned. It was like a late-autumn sun – bright and glowing, but only lukewarm against her pale skin, never hot enough to burn, even at high noon. Dolokhov is all fire, and it frightens her. She wonders if she is even capable of feeling that strongly, that passionately. For him or for anyone else.

Her dress is a deep, warm cream. Three months ago, it had been as white as the first snow in mid-November. She is nearly as terrified now as she was then. 

“They won’t understand.”

“They don’t need to.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”

He sighs and lets go of her face, takes her hands instead, lacing their fingers together. “Sophie. It’s an invitation to summer at a friend’s estate. What harm is in it?” 

“My family does not like your friends. I don’t know if I do, either.”

“Did we not discuss this? I thought you promised to give him a chance?”

Sonya sighs, defeated. The sun is setting, and she can smell the honeycakes they will have for supper. It is Natasha’s bright, feverish eyes that haunt her the most; the way she had said _those people_. It is the indifference in the old Countess’ face and the old Count’s mask of cheerfulness that did not quite reach his eyes. It is the way Nikolai will not look at her now. 

“Is it the Countess Bezukhova you fear?” he asks, his eyebrows furrowing. 

She shudders. “No. I do not fear anyone.”

“She will be abroad, almost certainly.” 

“I don’t—” Sonya cuts off. She doesn’t know what she fears. Her husband’s rumored former lover, her family’s judgement, or her own feelings, which she cannot quite decipher, as though she is so unused to considering what her own position is on a matter that the discovery that she does have one is piercing. “What if I don’t want to go?”

He lets go of her hands but does not turn away. “Then we won’t go,” he says simply.

The evening sun sweeps through his hair, lighting it with golden fire. She looks into his face – really looks – for the first time in that entire conversation, and feels the fear bleed out of her. He only ever looks at her this way, the way he is looking at her now, and she wants to cry for no reason at all. 

Bells in the distance from the church; bells announcing supper. They echo in her soul, flooding her mind. “We shall go then,” she says. He smiles at her and she smiles back.


End file.
